Whispers
by Sorsha711
Summary: A Halloween fantasy SVU style… or is it more? JMOFC


Title: Whispers

Author: Sorsha711  
Fandom/Pairing: JM/OFC

Rating: M, some adult content  
Disclaimer: The Munchkin isn't mine, except in my dreams! Sigh! DW owns him and the others.  
Summary: A Halloween fantasy SVU style… or is it more? JM/OFC

Whispers

John closed the door to his apartment and tossed a stack of files on a nearby table. Pulling off his coat, he opened the door to a small closet and hung his black Burberry on a hanger; his Fedora found its place on the shelf above. Raking a hand through his hair, he moved over to his favorite chair and dropped wearily into its comfort.

John knew he needed to eat… to sleep; it had been far too long since he had done either. The images seared into his memory from a recent crime scene made either impossible. Even after forty-eight hours, the macabre scene he and Fin had discovered in the abandoned house in Brooklyn haunted him. It had been a comfort that they had not found the little girl they were looking for among the house's blood spattered inhabitants, but comfort was otherwise in short supply. Squeezing his eyes shut in hopes of forcing the images away, John growled in frustration.

"Growling won't help you find her."

Startled, John's eyes popped open. Scanning the room for the source of the throaty, female voice, he found he was still very much alone. "Great! I'm hearing voices now! Keep this up and they will lock me up!"

Pushing himself to his feet, he made his way to the hutch where he kept a small stash of liquor. Pouring himself a generous portion of vodka, he quickly downed it in a single shot. Choking slightly on the fiery liquid, he coughed to clear his throat even as he began to refill the glass.

"Getting drunk won't help Mary either."

The glass shattered at his feet as he swung around to face whoever had invaded his home. The hair on the back of his neck stood on end… still tingling from the warm breath that had caressed his ear in concert with the speaker's purring voice. No one was there.

Taking a steadying breath, John demanded, "OK, game times over. Show yourself."

The apartment seemed to echo with the sounds of his pounding heart and heavy breathing. Pulling his gun from its holster, John began a slow, methodical search of his one-bedroom co-op in the Hudson Heights neighborhood of Manhattan. Fifteen minutes later, he stood in the middle of his bedroom, the search finding no sign that anyone other than himself had been in the apartment in months. He was alone, the flat's windows and door securely locked against easy entry.

Realizing he was still clutching his gun in a white-knuckled grip, John forced himself to walk over to the bedside table and store his weapon in the drawer where he kept it at night. Dropping onto the edge of the bed, he felt his shoulders slump. "Damn! Is this how it starts? Did Dad and Andrew hear voices too?"

Falling backwards onto the rumpled covers of the bed… he had been called in to work their latest case in the middle of the night and had left the bed unmade, John tried to still the private terror that was starting to take control of his mind. Both his father and his uncle had been crippled… destroyed by depression. He lived in fear of sharing their fate.

John knew he was prone to dark moods, but the idea that he would develop another form of mental illness had never occurred to him. In his line of work, he had seen too many people lost in the fantasy worlds of their own making to fail to understand what that meant. He was alone and, if he became delusional, he would have to face the darkness without the support of family. He and his only brother were no longer close, so he didn't expect much help from Bernie and his family.

A shiver of both longing and disquiet rippled through his body as soft lips seemed to ghost across his right temple. "You're never alone, dear one… nor are you losing your mind."

"Who are you?" /Great! Now I'm having a conversation with 'the voices'./

Another kiss… this one on his lips, left him shaking with unexpected need. It had been too long since he had last had a lover, even an imaginary one, and the feel of lips on his own awoke needs he had been trying to ignore. Instinctively, his arms lifted to try and capture his phantom lover and draw her to him. A groan of frustration accompanied the empty air his arms found.

A second caress to his lips proceeded, "You know me, love. You've seen me in countless dreams since you were a child. Do not fear me. I am here to help you."

"Help me? Help drive me crazy? Drive me into a padded room?" he whispered, even as the inexplicable certainty that he did know her settled around him. "Who are you?"

Soft laughter gusted against his ear. "No padded rooms for you, beloved. This room… this bed will serve us quite well."

Another ghostly kiss… this one to his throat caused him to harden with need. "You know me. Look into the mirror and accept the truth, my heart."

Pausing for only a second, John sat up. A silent war was fought in his head as his rational mind demanded he face reality and stop indulging this fantasy. Staring at the floor for several minutes, the need to know overcame his resistance and he lifted his eyes.

The mirror over the chest of drawers dominated one wall of his bedroom. In point of fact, the mirror was quite small… too small to generally commanded much attention, but the ornate, old-fashioned style of the woodwork stood out in stark contrast to the more modest furnishings elsewhere in his home. He had toyed with the idea of sticking it in storage and purchasing something more in keeping with his own style when he moved into the co-op eight years earlier. In the end, he had kept it more for its sentimental value than its aesthetic appeal. It was one of only three personal items his mother had managed to salvage from her family home after the Nazis had looted it during World War II.

The surface was scared and pocked with age spots. He seldom used it for its intended purpose anymore. He used the mirror in the small adjacent bathroom for his grooming needs and otherwise ignored this one. To his surprise, a silvery mist began to swirl in the midst of the cloudy glass. As he watched, the face of a woman slowly took form in its depths.

Long blue-black hair framed a delicate face, a face dominated by large green eyes. Those eyes were fixed on him, a mischievous twinkle giving them unusual power. Lush red lips curved into a small smile as she watched him try to make sense of what he was seeing. A slim, pale hand extended toward him in invitation.

Unsure of what he was seeing… realizing it couldn't possibly be real, John still found himself whispering, "I… I know you, but I don't know how. _Kaski san_?" (Romany for 'Who are you?')

"Esmerelda Kirpachi… and you know more than you realize. You just spoke Romany, the tongue of your mother's mother, Beti," she observed, a gentle smile calming his nerves. "Her family lived in the Carpathian Mountains of Romania. You call yourself a Romanian, even though Munch is Danish. Your father's family were all merchants. They never approved of your mother because of her gypsy heritage."

Shaking his head, he argued, "I don't speak Romany. I never knew my grandmother. My grandparents died in a Nazi work camp."

"When you were a child, your mother used to sing to you the songs her mother sang to her. As I said, you remember more than you know," she soothed. "Her father… your great-grandfather was named Durriken. It means 'he who forecasts'. You inherited your inquisitive nature from him. You see things others don't because you see with more than your eyes alone. You see truth even if it those around you would prefer to see only what is before them."

Her words triggered a memory of a Romany phrase his mother often whispered when she was frustrated by something or when someone's actions defied her sense of logic. She had refused to teach him Romany despite his repeated requests, saying it was best for them to move forward and forget the past. As a child he had been curious about the phrase, but he'd never understood it until that moment. _"Si khohaimo may pachivalo sar o chachimo."_ (Romany for 'There are lies more believable than truth.')

Rich, loving laughter greeted his comment. "Indeed! Will you deny me when the day comes that we can at last be together because you think I am not real… a lie created by your mind to torment you? I exist, my love… as alive and as real as you are."

Unconsciously, he reached out in her direction needing to touch her, know she had substance beyond the delusions of a failing mind. Her slim hand captured his, tugging him gently toward her. The spell cast by her green eyes held him fast and he took no notice of his passage into the realm of the mist.

It took him a moment to realize she was standing before him and that he could finally touch her. He was surprised for some inexplicable reason to find she was tall and willowy. She stood only a few inches short of his 6'1" height. Slender arms reached up to twine around his neck as soft lips captured his in earnest this time. Instinct… need took over and they sank to the ground.

Frantic fingers tore at the clothing that kept them apart; soft moans and sighs competed with the sounds of labored breathing. Her body was soft and welcoming… her arms and legs a sure embrace. He had had sex more times than he could remember… even made love a few precious times, but nothing prepared him for the pleasure… the rightness of making love to her.

He lost all sense of time and place. His world narrowed to encompass only her. In the end, he fell into a healing sleep, sated and whole for the first time in his life.

As the mists of sleep settled around him, he heard her whisper… promise. _"Si khohaimo may pachivalo sar o chachimo._ Follow your instincts and you will find Mary. You are a true son of your forefather. Find her… and you will find your way to me, my love."

-----

John woke with a start. Looking around, he realized he had fallen asleep in his chair in the living room of his apartment. Sighing, he whispered, "It was only a dream."

A sultry laugh echoed in his head. A small smile brightened his face. Looking to his right, he found another of his mother's treasures… a battered picture of her own mother sitting on the knee of his grandfather. _"Si khohaimo may pachivalo sar o chachimo."_

-----

John strode into the SVU squadroom early the next morning. The answers… or more correctly, the questions he needed had come to him in the minutes after he had awakened from his dream. "Cap, let me have another crack at Gabriel. I think I know how to get him to tell us where Mary's hidden … and why."

-----

In less than an hour, he had managed to get their only suspect to talk. Gabriel's bizarre tale had led them to the child… cold and scared, but alive. His fellow detectives had been sending him questioning glances ever since they had returned from rescuing Mary from a vault under an old building in SoHo. He knew it would only be a matter of time before they demanded to know how he had figured out the right approach to breaking Gabriel.

The 'where' part of Gabriel's tale had been colorful, but relatively straight-forward. The vault had been built during Prohibition as a secret storeroom for illegal booze smuggled into Manhattan by the Mob. The rest of his story had been unlike any they had ever heard.

The vault's existence had been unearthed by the leader of a coven of vampire wannabes. Vasile, as he liked to be called, had kidnapped the child with the intent of using her in a blood ritual intended to solidify his claim to be the title of the Dark Prince. In actual fact, Vasile's real name was Roger, the son of school teachers from New Jersey. The closest claim he could make to a connection to the historic figure of Vlad Drăculea was that he had seen every Dracula movie ever made.

In a scene that would have been at home in any low-budget horror movie, they had found the coven making the last of the preparations for the ritual planned for sunset that evening. Vasile's followers had run rather than fight, all subsequently captured by the police officers surrounding the building. In a final twist, their chief suspect had impaled himself on a stake hoping to die rather than be arrested. He had missed all of his vital organs in the botched attempt and had been taken to Bellevue's prison wing for treatment and booking.

Mary had been treated and released to the care of her grateful parents. Thankfully, the coven had taken relatively good care of the child so that she would 'make a good sacrifice' for their would-be king. John had no doubt that the child would suffer from nightmares for the rest of her life, but they all knew it could have been far worse.

Unable to endure Munch's smug silence any longer, Fin demanded, "Spill it! How did you know she was still alive… and how did you get that psycho to talk?"

"Yeah… give." Olivia echoed, trading looks with the other members of their squad.

Dodging around a group of children clad as pirates, wizards, and ghosts, John sent his friends an infuriating smirk. "Have I ever told you my great-grandfather Durriken was Romany?"

"A gypsy?" Elliot demanded, irritated by the older man's taunting expression. "No, but what does that have to do with anything?"

"He lived in the Carpathian Mountains of Romania… Transylvania," John offered, enjoying the moment. "Vampire-hunting is an old family profession."

Before any of them could answer, a lovely woman with blue-black hair stepped out of a cab near where they were clustered. Following her friends into a small local bar, she turned at the door to look John's way. Sparking green eyes held his for a moment. With a flirtatious wink, she disappeared inside.

Ignoring the byplay, Fin demanded, "You're saying you inherited a skill at fighting Dracula? Who do you think you are Munchkin Van Helsing?"

"_Si khohaimo may pachivalo sar o chachimo." _Laughing, John glanced back at his friends. "Come on. It's been a rough few days, so I'm buying the first round."

Cragen tilted his head to watch the play of emotions on John's usually stoic face. "Or you just want to go into that bar to see if you can get more than a wink from a beautiful lady. Planning to cast a spell using those gypsy skills of yours?"

Laughing, John nodded. "Why not? It's Halloween after all and there's something magical in the air!"

-----

A/N --- Should I write a sequel?

Reviews PLEASE!!!


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